FMF: Surrender

It is Friday, even though it doesn't feel like it. The holidays always throw me off! Before I get started on my five minutes, I want to take a moment to talk about my hunny. Today is our second wedding anniversary. Never would have imagined where these two years have brought us, but here we are, mostly unscathed. I love you more today then ever. Happy anniversary baby! Praying God will continue to be with us in our marriage and bless us in our marriage.

Today's prompt word is surrender. This is something I have always had a hard time with. Giving something over to God and letting Him keep it is hard for me. I tend to be the person who "gives it to God" but then takes it back as soon as I feel like things are settling. That isn't supposed to be how it works. I am supposed to give Him my worries, my troubles, the things that weigh me down and let Him keep them. I can't help thinking about that child with a toy story. I'm sure you have heard it somewhere. The child gives the toy to his father, asks him to fix it but keeps taking it back. No way for things to get fixed if I don't let go completely or keep taking it back. He wants to take care of me, help me carry my burdens, but that can't happen without complete surrender. What is in my life right now that I need to let go of? I think the biggest thing would be the problems with Stephen's mental health. I want to be able to just fix things, but it doesn't work like that. This is something that is completely out of my hands. All I need to do is let go.

This post inspired by: 

Our Vows, One Year Later.

Just realized that I never shared our vows from the wedding on here. So, today, the first anniversary of our marriage, I am sharing our vows with my followers and friends who weren't able to see us say them in person.

Stephen's vow to me: 

Betsy, you are my best friend. I promise to laugh and cry with you. 

I will love you when we are together and when we are apart. 

I promise to support your dreams and to respect our differences 

and to love you and be by your side through all the days of our lives. 

I promise to always be your biggest fan and your partner in crime. 

I promise to create and support a family with you, 

in a household filled with laughter, patience, understanding and love. 

I vow not just to grow old together, but to grow together. 

I will love you faithfully through the difficult and easy times. 

What may come, I will always be there, each one believing that love never dies. 

As I have given you my hand to hold, so I give you my life to keep. 

I promise before God and these witnesses to be your loving and faithful husband. 

I will be by your side to share with you your happiness and success, 

and to comfort you in times of sorrow and disappointment. 

As your husband, I will seek to be open and honest with you, 

to forgive you as Christ has forgiven me 

and to always remind you of the Lords plans and promises. 

I devote my love and my life to you from this day forward until the end of time. 

My vow to him: 

Stephen, today I take you as my best friend, my partner in crime and my love forever. 

In the presence of God, our family and our friends, and with His help 

I promise to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in joy as well as sorrow. 

I promise to help you love life, to always hold you with tenderness 

and to have the patience that love demands. 

To speak when words are needed 

and share the silence when they are not. 

I promise to fiercely love you, in all your forms, now and forever. 

I promise to be faithful and true to you in mind, body and spirit; 

and to be a source of comfort and encouragement for you. 

I will be forgiving, but not complacent. 

I promise to love you, and no matter what challenges might try to carry us apart,

we will always find a way back to each other. 

Stephen, today is our 365th day of marriage, our first full year is officially done! Today I wanted to take the time to write you a short note. I want to thank you for putting up with my mood swings, the way I whine when I am sick. Thank you for adopting my children as your own. You choose to love them when you didn't have to, and that means more to me then you can possibly imagine. I love you so much and thank you for putting up with me. xoxox, your wife, Betsy

Happy Birthday Mikey!

Today would have been my mom and dad's 34th wedding anniversary. Just another reason her sudden death breaks my heart. They should have had so many more together. Only God knows the reason He took my mom home so quickly, I am sure someday I will understand. For today, I am just requesting some extra prayers for my daddy. If it's this hard on me, I can't even imagine how he is feeling.

On a much happier note, today is also my "baby" brother's birthday! Today he turns 27. I am so proud of the man he is becoming. He's an amazing daddy and I love watching him with sweet, not-so-much-a-baby, Roselyn.

Mike, I hope that your 27th year is amazing. You are constantly in my thoughts and prayers. Happy birthday and I love you!

1000 Gifts: three gifts smelled

• It is a gift to smell my tomato plants. Reminds me of my childhood. 
• It is a gift to smell my essential oils. They can uplift me with just a whiff. 
• It is a gift to smell my clean babies. I love snuggling after their showers. 

7 YEARS?!

I can hardly believe it! I have been blogging for seven years. I won't brag too much, since I took way too many extended breaks but I have really enjoyed doing this. I have been blogging the last two years without missing very many posts. Hopefully you all enjoy reading them as much as I love writing them. Thank you to all my loyal readers and comment-ers. I take the time to read and respond to every comment now, so keep em coming!

Recently I have had a lot of traffic on this post, but my all time most looked at post is Santa's Prayer on Christmas Eve followed by My List.

Here are a few of my personal favorites:
Of course I love the two birth stories I posted.
My rant when I didn't get to go in the hospital as planned was pretty funny.
I also really loved my series Thirty Things My Kids Should Know About Me.

What are your favorite posts of mine? What kind of things do you like to read/see? What should I do more or less of? Would love to get some input on what people like to read!

Happy Anniversary/Birthday

I have two special holidays today.

First is my parents 33rd anniversary. 

Happy 33rd Anniversary mom and dad!! 

They are really an example of a successful marriage. I won't lie and say they have the perfect marriage, but I will say they have been a great example of how to make it work. I have never once heard them even discuss separating because of problems. It is really amazing to have two parents who stuck it out, even when the going got tough. I thank you both for the example and for being such wonderful parents to us. I don't think I could have asked for better ones. I love you guys and hope you have an amazing anniversary! 

It is also my brother's 26th birthday. 

Happy 26th birthday Michael!

I am so very proud of the man he has become. He is so amazing with his daughter and I love seeing them together. This year has been rough for him but I am so proud that he is working things out and really trying to figure out what is best for not only himself, but Roselyn as well. I love you so much Mikey and hope you have an amazing birthday. You are beyond blessed and I am blessed to have you for a brother. 

Funny story about my brother's birthday, it was actually my mom's due date for him. She says that she laughed when the doctor told her and said something along the lines of "sure I will be having a baby on my anniversary." This is another example of why you never laugh at your doctor. She ended up having him on her anniversary, not induced or anything. Makes me smile every time I think about it. Also a funny note to make is at one of her appointments the doctor was way behind. He came in and told her not to have her baby during business hours because it totally messed up his schedule (joking of course!) My brother ended up coming during the lunch hour. I guess that will teach him to joke like that. 

Golden Anniversary

A Golden Couple Half a century ago, they say,
A wonderful marriage began that day.
Two beautiful people joined as one,
And worked together to make living fun. We celebrate now those fifty years;
We raise our glass and give three cheers:
To partners in life in both work and play,
It’s our pleasure to share your golden day. Happy 50th Anniversary! By Karl Fuchs
used with permission from
www.poemsource.com

Today we celebrate my grandparrents 50th wedding anniversary. I hope to someday celebrate the same! It is a true joy to be in the presence of two such as these. I wish you all the best and many more happy years together!

Yaquina lighthouse creatures

Then we were there at high tide and weren't able to see many tide pools, but were able to get a look, down in the quary area of these little guys (well not little, lol)

All the light spots are seals

Here is one swimming in the water, you can just barely see his little face

Then this guy is just laying out in the sun, getting a tan!

And this one caught my eye, and I wanted to take him home so bad!!

Just look at those eyes! But Jimmy said no, probably for the best. He looks quite happy in the ocean!

If you are interested in visiting the Yaquinta Head Lighthouse, it is open every day, unless there are high winds. It is the farthest jet of land out the Pacific ocean, so it gets breezy. Anyway, you have to pay $5 to park, but you get a pass for three days. It is located right at the North end of Newport Oregon, and is totally worth it. They have a whole little center to look in, and tide pool areas. They even have things that talk about the whale migrations and best times to see them. (In October and April I believe) They have trained people from the Forest Service (I think thats where) who can talk to you, answer any questions you might have. Children must be 42 (might be 45) inches tall to go up to the top of the lighthouse, so keep that in mind. But I honestly believe it is sooo worth it!!

Lookie!!

What Jimmy and I got for our 5th anniversary from our very dear friends Andy and Lindsey

Isn't that the coolest thing you have EVER seen?? It is a personalized bottle of Jones Soda! It has our wedding picture on it, with a little message from them:

May you be as

happy now and always

as you were right here.

Love Andy and Lindsey

June 2008

I have the best friends don't I?? (its okay, you can say it, I won't tell!!)

5 years

Jimmy and I have been married for five years today. I am going to share a little bit of mushy stuff. Five years ago I didn't think that I would be able to love Jimmy any more then I do now. But some how I do. Seeing him playing with the girls is just the best feeling ever. I get all the warm fuzzies. And even though we've had our arguments things are overall happy in the Smith home. I am sure he won't be reading this, so I don't have to worry about ruining his present, but I got him a new titanium wedding band. I would share pictures of that but I got it wrapped the day I picked it up, so no one gets to see until he opens it tonight!! Anyway, I would also love to share some wedding pictures, but stupid photobucket says they are the wrong file types, so you will have to wait until after this weekend and I will share pictures of our trip to the ocean. This is the first time we will get to stay in a hotel alone. We didn't get a real honeymoon. Instead we got to move. We were lucky enough to find a house of our own to move into the week before the wedding, and the stupid landlord (long story) wouldn't let us move in till 5 years ago today... So, Jimmy got to spend all day long moving. Anyway. So about four months ago I booked a hotel room (got a great deal because of my job!) So, I will take lots of pictures and share them this weekend. I will apologize ahead of time if my blogs aren't posted the beginning of each day. We'll see how it goes! The weather couldn't be better, I asked for no rain, and guess what NO RAIN IN THE FORECAST ALL WEEKEND!! YAY!! Have a good weekend everyone!

My parents

Have been married for 27 years today. I honestly believe that had it not been for their example of what a marriage should be I wouldn't have ended up with the wonderful man that I did. My mom used to say that her and dad cursed us kids with only one set of parents and we could never say when we were mad that we were going to our dad's because that was home! lol. And then she would go on to say we were also cursed with only four grandparents, because strangely enough neither set of those were ever divorced either. I am in the minority now a days. I pray that Jimmy and my marriage will be such an example for our kids. Only 19% of the way there!

Happy 27th Anniversary Mom and Dad!!